mr. t.

old people are far from boring.

mr. T. is close to 90 years old. he has had a long, not always easy, life. he has a tendency to drool, for which he carries around a white cloth handkerchief. the result of ageing and a stroke years back. when he reads the paper, he lays it on the table in front of him and leans over it with his face 5cm above it; it's the only way he can still see the letters. sometimes he falls asleep in this position, his back hunched, his arms stretched out holding the top corners of the paper, his head held just above the front page. he does everything slowly. very slowly. he's still 'all there', just at a slower pace than the world around him. but he talks alot (slowly of course) and he smiles alot. and he plays Triominoes every wednesday. he watches the others make their move, then looks at his board, he mutters to himself, he slowly picks up a tile and lays it next to one he thinks might match, it doesn't, he slowly picks it up again and puts it back on his board, he picks up another, lays, picks it up. painstaking. deliberate. he misses the clear match that i see sitting on the corner of his board, but i don't point it out. he's not a child. he's played this way for years. he hardly ever wins. and he loves it.

today his drool was red.

first the corners of his mouth were pink. i thought maybe he had eaten a coloured candy. then i saw red drops on his cake plate. and red swimming in his coffee. we checked his mouth for missing teeth or open sores. he wasn't coughing, it couldn't be from his lungs. he wiped his chin with his white handkerchief. he muttered that we should stop fussing about him. he seemed fine. so we let him alone and kept an eye on him.

it didn't stop. his handkerchief is spotted and streaked. his collar and sweater have large dark blotches on them. he'd soak it in warm water, he said.

we checked his mouth again. this time we found the source. he'd bitten his tongue. and he's on blood-thinners, his blood won't clot, so it just keeps bleeding. i wiped his mouth and hands with a warm wet cloth. he chuckled at me. this afternoon when he left for home, he spit on the handkerchief and showed it to me. 'See! It's clear! Now stop worrying!'

we're on for Triominoes again next week.

loving the cat

Kitty killed a bird yesterday. She ate it's guts and then puked them up all over the floor. This is the third bird in the past two months. The last one I found lying headless at the door. No guts lying all over the place at least. Never found the head. I'm assuming it re-appeared in the litter box.

She has this spot on our coconut-fiber rug that she likes to claw. The rug is 2x3 meters in size. But she claws only the one spot. Now there's a big fuzzy spot, right by the door, the first thing you see.

I made a little hut for her last month. She likes small dark corners. Whenever there is a box in the room, she jumps in it. If I open the closet, she hides in it and I usually only find her hours later when I realize I haven't seen her for a while and then I hear her meowing but can't figure out where it's coming from. When I'm on the couch, she crawls on my lap and tries to get under the blanket. I thought the little hut would be her new favorite spot. It was. For a day. Now she's back to perching on the end of the couch or sprawling out on the one white cushioned chair which as now turned a brownish yellow from whatever dirty stuff she leaves behind.

Every morning I almost fall to my death when I walk down the stairs and kitty appears out of nowhere right under my next step. She likes to be close to us. Real close. She especially loves to run little circles around our feet. It's particularly fun when we are walking. I think she gets a sadistic pleasure out of our stumblings. Even the times we step on her tail, kick her in the head or send her sprawling across the room before falling on our own faces is not enough to gain some space.

---

We are looking for a kitten. Why? To keep kitty company while we are both gone all day. Now I will have two piles of puke to clean up on a regular basis. Two ugly spots on the rug. Two dirty spots on the furniture. Two cats constantly running under my feet. Yes, this is a completely rational decision and I won't regret it one bit.

november

we woke up to fog this morning. which means no wind. which means an easy bike-ride to work. only to find out that i'd been scheduled on someone elses hours...so i got sent home, so no work today. or well, no official paid work. will be doing house-wifey work instead. maybe i'll finish up that picture album from our Alberta vacation this summer. printed waaaay too many pictures and i hate to throw any away, which makes for some rough cut-and-pasting.
maybe i'll find some awesome job opening in the paper today. or online. or in my weekly email from city unemployment offices. or maybe i'll hear back from that one awesome interview i had weeks ago. or maybe this will be the beginning of my latest mental breakdown... it is november, which means winter is coming, which means my tendency to seasonal meloncholy and depression is about to be encouraged by 4:30pm-8:30am darkness and incessant misty rain for the next four months. i do, however, have one major high-light to look forward to. christmas tree setup! and my four 100+ classic and cheesy christmas hits cds! i have to wait at least three more weeks, but then the shiny balls and stars and ribbons are coming out of the box, baby!